After three month of kayaking in Chile I am finally back home. I am glad I made it back before the earthquake and feel really sorry for all the aggrieved people.
I must admit three month of paddling was exactly what I needed, day after day with nothing else to do apart from kayaking. Isn’t that great?! 😉
During my first month some german friends and I ran the rivers from Santiago down to Pucon. One big highlight was for sure the Rio Claro, we jumped down the ventidos saltos about 5 times – the last run took us only 19 minutes from the putin to the final drop – germans like the autobahn.
Not as lucky was I after my run down the caracol in the Entre Saltos section, I landed flat and ended up with a broken paddle, a broken nose and two blue eyes … at least I kept my smile.
After my german friends left, I met two kiwis, we rented a nice camioneta and were ready for new adventures. This time to Argentinia and South Chile. One of my favorite runs was the Los Alerces Section on the Rio Manso, but at the same time it was a bit scary as we were just the two of us, had a lot of water and not much information about the river. So we ended up being in a canyon infront of a rapid which looked pretty big, but was impossible to scout and to portage. That was an explosion of emotions after we two made it through the big hole at the bottom. 😉
It was a really rainy season in Chile, so we encountered high waterlevels on the Futa and further down south. One thing remains obvious, it was for sure not my last time on this incredible beautiful rivers of Patagonia.
